 Morac
join:2001-08-30
Riverside, NJ
kudos:1
 ·Comcast
| Comcast's support system needs to be completely overhauled Adding more phone reps won't help when the overall support system is broken. The issue is the three tiered support (phone, techs, line techs).
1. Phone support cannot do anything but schedule a local tech. Even if a phone support can see evidence of an issue affecting more than one person, s/he can only schedule a local tech. If enough people call from one area, it triggers an "outage", but most people are lazy and don't call (my neighbor's Internet access was out for a week before she called). So it doesn't matter if the phone support person is competent or not (not that I enjoy talking to incompetent phone support). On a related note, the local techs cannot read the support logs from phone support so when a phone rep "makes a detailed log of your problem", the local techs never see that. The local techs see a short description of problem (eg: "packet loss") instead of the details (eg: "packet loss caused by an upstream signal issue affecting everyone in a 3 block radius").
2. Comcast should monitor its own network for problems. I shouldn't have to spend weeks getting an upstream line issue fixed when a simple automated monitoring system could detect signal problems and automatically notify the line tech department. If I can see problems running a smokeping test, Comcast should be able to automatically monitor the headends for problems.
For completeness, here's my last major Comcast problem which demonstrates the flaws in the system.
A month or two ago, I started noticing dropped pings, slow download and errors on my modem so I called Comcast support. The person ran tests and said that yes there was a problem so she scheduled a local tech. Before the tech came out the problem went away so I canceled the call. The problem came back so I got phone support to schedule another tech and when the person showed up the problem went away. This went on for a few weeks with a total of 4 tech visits; each time the problem wasn't occurring when the tech showed up. A couple of times I had the phone person check the upstream values (which were way off), but the phone person could only schedule a local tech.
Frustrated I decided to call the number of a lead tech that I knew from a previous issue I had (and amazingly he answered). Since I was having the problem at that time, he could easily see from looking at the headend data, that there was an upstream problem in the area (everyone's upstream values were fluctuating wildly). He sent the information to the line tech department.
I had one more local tech come out and all he did was tell me that the problem had now been escalated to the line tech department and would be fixed soon (it was within a few days). I asked him if there was software that monitors the upstream values in the headend automatically (so I wouldn't need to go through this) and he said that would be a good idea, but there isn't any.
So in my case I'd still be having problems if I hadn't had the office number of a local tech.
--
The Comcast Disney Avatar has been retired. |
